Posted
by
samzenpus
on Tuesday April 03, 2012 @02:53PM
from the I-see-what-you-wrote-there dept.

An anonymous reader writes "Researchers from the University of Lugano, Switzerland, and other universities from the U.S. and Europe organize a competition to automatically identify sexual predators in chat logs. The task is described as: 'The goal of this sub-task is to identify classes of authors, namely online predators. You will be given chat logs involving two (or more) people and have to determine who is the one trying to convince the other participants(s) to provide some sexual favor. You will also need to identify the particular conversation where the person exploits his bad behavior.' Their data set covers hundreds of chat logs with dozens of true positives (i.e., chats where one is trying to hit on another)."

Actually that's what I was thinking to, you could cheat the one who says they are 15 is the one who is the predator. (I'm being serious, at least in my generation (I'm in my mid 20's) of internet chatting, the kids were the ones claiming to be 18-25).

Well, they say it's a sub-task. Many places allow anyone older than 13 (or rather, who say they're 13 due to COPPA) to sign up. Identifying who is trying to solicit sexual favors from self-identified minors - particularly by self-identified adults - and yes people are that stupid - doesn't sound that unreasonable. Of course if the kids lie and say they're 18+ instead that might be different...

Not everyone who solicits sexual favors is a "predator". They seem to be making that leap.

Hell, some people seemingly solicit for sexual favors when they actually want nothing of the sort. Just the other day, two guys were shouting at each other, and unless this was some kind of passive-aggressive homoerotic fantasy being acted out, the one's invitation, "Suck my dick!" to the other was almost undoubtedly not solicited with any expectation or desire behind it...

Now, what do you do with the piece of software that acts like a predator, though? Put it in car alarms or something?

Hmm, if it was smart enough to be able to respond to conversations or situations around it I'd definitely want it on my phone: what better than your phone suddenly joining in a conversation you're having and making awkward sexual advances to you, or having your phone yell obscenities to all the pretties around you on the bus?! If it works as a pick-up method, well, good for you, and if it doesn't you can always just blame your phone!!

Well, they'll need to develop a chatbot that acts like a normal person, and a chatbot that acts like a sexual predator, and then all three of the pieces of software could go through a rapid automated evolutionary development process.

Now, what do you do with the piece of software that acts like a predator, though? Put it in car alarms or something?

Clearly they will use THAT piece to model the Chris Hansen bot against. And we all know there isn't enough of *that guy* to go around...

Well, they'll need to develop a chatbot that acts like a normal person, and a chatbot that acts like a sexual predator, and then all three of the pieces of software could go through a rapid automated evolutionary development process.

Some friends of mine did that once, and put them into a teen-oriented IRC channel. "Lace" was about thirty lines long, and mostly just pretended to be teenage girl playing with anatomy and inviting others to do the same. The other one, whose name escapes me, was about a gig and a half from all of the conversation it had absorbed.

The big one was kickbanned quickly, within a few minutes. "Lace" remained in the channel for the better part of an hour until people stopped replying to it, and was finally booted when the moderator-bot kicked it when "Lace" posted, "you're boring! I shouldn't have left #hotstuff" or something like that, citing that "Lace" was advertising for other channels.

The guy who had written the serious, big one was devastated. The guy who wrote lace had the rage-comics troll face look for the next several days.

Not everyone who solicits sexual favors is a "predator". They seem to be making that leap.

Hell, some people seemingly solicit for sexual favors when they actually want nothing of the sort. Just the other day, two guys were shouting at each other, and unless this was some kind of passive-aggressive homoerotic fantasy being acted out, the one's invitation, "Suck my dick!" to the other was almost undoubtedly not solicited with any expectation or desire behind it...

The cultural expectation in the West has been, for quite some time, that if you're a white male, you're a sexual predator. That's what Women's Studies has been teaching to Education and Business majors now for several generations, and is often considered a requirement (as I understand things). Many convictions today of sexual harassment, as well as rape trials, are based on that thin veil of sexism and racism.

bloodninja: Nostrils flaring, I lower my head. My horn, like some phallic symbol of my potent virility, is the last thing you see as skulls collide and mine remains the victor. You are now a bloody red ragdoll suspended in the air on my mighty horn.

bloodninja: Goddam am I hard now.

--------------

BritneySpears14: Ok, are you ready?

eminemBNJA: Aight, yeah I'm ready.

BritneySpears14: I like your music Em... Tee hee.

eminemBNJA: huh huh, yeah, I make it for the ladies.

BritneySpears14: Mmm, we like it a lot. Let me show you.

BritneySpears14: I take off your pants, slowly, and massage your muscular physique.

eminemBNJA: Oh I like that Baby. I put on my robe and wizard hat.

BritneySpears14: What the f*ck, I told you not to message me again.

eminemBNJA: Oh ****

BritneySpears14: I swear if you do it one more time I'm gonna report your ISP and say you were sending me kiddie porn you f*ck up.

I can't believe this got modded down. Seriously people? Just for that I'm going to post this:

<JonJonB> Ok<JonJonB> I have found, definitive proof<JonJonB> that J.K Rowling is a dirty DIRTY woman, making a fool of us all<JonJonB> "Yes," Harry said, gripping his wang very tightly, and moving into the middle of the deserted classroom. He tried to keep his mind on flying, but something else kept intruding.... Any second now, he might hear his mother again... but he shouldn't think that,

Me: Hey beautifulHer: Wow, thanks. That was unexpectedMe: I'm not saying it because it's nice, I'm saying it because it's true.Her: My my, whats gotten into you? Youre in a really sweet mood rite now:)Me: I realized It's time to talk to beautiful girls and chew bubble gum, and I'm all outta gum.Her: You know I have a boyfriend right? Why are you saying this to me anyway?Me: I've got balls of steel!Her: lol you probably do cause he'd be pissed if he saw this.Me: I'm an equal opportunity ass kicker!Her: HAHA omg, you're so weird today. You tell me I'm beautiful and now you're acting all alpha.Me: Balls of steel!Her: Right right. Look, honestly I think you're kind of cute so if you're not doing anything right now, why don't you come over? Just don't tell anyone okay:)Me: Hail to the king, babyHer: lol, just get the hell over hereMe: Damn I'm good

It isn't always obvious because efforts to get into someone's head aren't always obvious.

Some people will attempt to groom a chat participant - they will ask more or less innocuous questions, but occasionally throw in one that is just a shade less innocuous than the others. Over time they will push the limits, until eventually some of the most outrageous stuff seems like it's just par for the course from this person. They'll couch all of this in the guise of being a mentor or friend, will back off if their target gets a little iffy, but will try to reconcile and take another tack. When this method is used against a target from a vulnerable population (kids, for example) it's scary how effective it can be and how easily even people who are not in vulnerable groups get taken in (see: people who fall for scams).

Eventually predators will shift to a more active part once their target has been willing to talk openly about previously forbidden subjects, and they'll attempt to get a cam session, phonecall, pics, meetings, whatever. The target might agree to go on cam or to pics, and at that point the predator has them - "Hey, if you don't keep doing this I'll post those pics/videos everywhere" etc.

It's easy to recognize the obvious and unsubtle ones, but it's a lot harder to recognize (from a relatively small sample) the more crafty ones unless you're an outside observer. For example, if I were someone being groomed by a predator as I described, I might not balk at a question as to whether I had pubic hair since I'd already been conditioned to trust that person. But if I were an outside observer it would be obvious that is untoward - unfortunately for many people targeted by predators, no outside observer is there to kind of make them realize what's going on.

As a researcher who often works with young people who have been exploited or put at risk, I've been given chatlogs from predators like the ones I've described above and was just astonished at how things progressed. However, quite a few of the skeevy questions that were asked by predators were ALSO asked in completely innocuous relationships and in that context were not nearly as skeevy. Just flagging based on questions or terms isn't enough - it's a context that needs to be understood.

The goal, I imagine, in the case of this contest, would be to help automate the process of that "outside observer" to have the software check for suspicious behavior/history and throw a flag once it passes a certain threshold but BEFORE the target gets exploited, and possibly to minimize the number of false positives so that extensive resources aren't wasted on non-predatory relationships.

Ethical considerations aside, it's an interesting problem and could be applied to a number of areas where you're attempting to detect non-obvious manipulative behavior in any kind of multi-party interaction.

To expand on this a bit.... in a less creepy way.... I remember being an awkward 20 something geek. Never learned how to really "get girls", more than a bit socially inept. so naturally I started reading up on flirting, and dating.... etc...

After a while I came to a conclusion.... the distance between being friendly and hitting on someone is very very short and often as much in the mind of the individual as anywhere. In fact, most of the things that one is told to do "look her in the eye", "pay attention to

It's actually pretty amazing just how vastly the difference in perception can be when doing things like flirting, as you say. When one party is thinking about the interaction in a different context than the other there is HUGE room for misunderstanding even when the signals are unambiguous.

I'd also agree that I'm skeptical about this kind of system; my gut tells me it would need to have a huge amount of information on each person in the chat, across multiple chats with multiple parties, to even begin to bui

When one party is thinking about the interaction in a different context than the other there is HUGE room for misunderstanding even when the signals are unambiguous.

Then it would appear that what you call unambiguous signals are in fact extremely ambiguous. The context is part of the message too, so if the parties are not aware of what context the other is using, then the communication has already failed.

Some people are very, very good at reading people - can take one look at someone, see a relatively small number of factors but put them together into a framework that suggests lots of other probabilities about the person that turns out to be startlingly accurate. I could see them trying this to see if it's possible for algorithms to pull off this same kind of feat.

It's called cold reading [wikipedia.org], and it's a parlor trick / con game / pseudoscience. The reason it appears to work is primarily due to confirmation bias [wikipedia.org] - you want to believe, so you focus on the successes and ignore the misses, even when the latter far outnumber the former.

As an awkward 20-something myself, I have found it extremely important to verifying or explicitly establish context during important communications. For example, if after a sufficient amount of normal conversation you are not certain that she is uninterested, say out loud "I am interested in you as a possible romantic partner." It is much more effective than the mix of body language and innocuous comments known as flirting, especially when the target is similarly awkward and socially unaware. If she is no

See, the great thing about experiments/projects like this is that they can help us understand if our gut instinct about whether or not something can work or not is actually correct.

As I said, I also am skeptical about how well this could possibly work, but it's definitely think its an interesting problem to look at be ause if it IS possible, despite our mutual skepticism, that's pretty damn neat and can lead to learning more things.

Some of the most interesting bits of knowledge we have came about by asking

No, after user_a.age have been assigned 18, the assignment will return 18, which is true. The problem in this case is that the algorithm is overzealous, and will also flag 18- user_a males as predators.

Wait, so sexual predators are people who go exclusively after 18-year-olds? No older, no younger?

Even if I assume that slashdot ate your '<' and you really meant "user_a.age<=18", that's still flawed in two ways: 1) 18 is legal (so '<=' was not the right operator to use), and, 2) in most states (and most countries outside the US), 17 is legal, and in several states (and several countries), 16 is legal. Also many sexual predators (possibly most) go after adults and/or don't really care about the a

That doesn't even begin to address the issues. I suspect he was trying to make a joke, but his psuedo-code was so bad that the joke was entirely lost--I can't even begin to guess what he was trying to convey. Furthermore, posting psuedo-code that bad/buggy on slashdot is hardly a way to gain geek cred points.

Your NAMBLA logic fails you once you understand what entrapment truly is. An adult sending sexually explicit text messages to a person posing to be a minor is not entrapment. An adult going over to what they think is a minor's residence with the intent of molesting the minor is not entrapment. It becomes entrapment if the fake minor steers the conversation to an inappropriate conversation.

A person is 'entrapped' when he is induced or persuaded by law enforcement officers or their agents to commit a crime that he had no previous intent to commit; and the law as a matter of policy forbids conviction in such a case.
However, there is no entrapment where a person is ready and willing to break the law and the Government agents merely provide what appears to be a favorable opportunity for the person to commit the crime. For example, it is not entrapment for a Government agent to pretend to be someone else and to offer, either directly or through an informer or other decoy, to engage in an unlawful transaction with the person. So, a person would not be a victim of entrapment if the person was ready, willing and able to commit the crime charged in the indictment whenever opportunity was afforded, and that Government officers or their agents did no more than offer an opportunity.
On the other hand, if the evidence leaves a reasonable doubt whether the person had any intent to commit the crime except for inducement or persuasion on the part of some Government officer or agent, then the person is not guilty.
In slightly different words: Even though someone may have [sold drugs], as charged by the government, if it was the result of entrapment then he is not guilty. Government agents entrapped him if three things occurred:
- First, the idea for committing the crime came from the government agents and not from the person accused of the crime.
- Second, the government agents then persuaded or talked the person into committing the crime. Simply giving him the opportunity to commit the crime is not the same as persuading him to commit the crime.
- And third, the person was not ready and willing to commit the crime before the government agents spoke with him.
On the issue of entrapment the government must prove beyond a reasonable doubt that the defendant was not entrapped by government agents.

What if I am just trying to get laid? Seriously, how does one determine from chat text whether a person is a 'sexual predator' vs. someone who is just looking for a casual hookup? Wouldn't the approach be similar if not identical? I smell a FAIL.

Of course, the results of this 'competition' will likely get support from conservative, big brother regimes as a way to ring up innocent and horny people - particularly targeting young men - online.

Gender based stereotyping, convictions and punishment coming soon to the interwebs and country you live in. That's just wonderful!

Then you are a predator. In the minds of these people, going to the bar and looking for the sluttiest girl is no different from going to the watering hole and looking for the slowest Wildebeest. You will get caught in a drag net, and no one will care that you're harmless because you've been labeled a sexual predator. After all, "if it stops just one rape..."

If you identify the object of the advances is a minor, that would make it a predator

So when two high school students are chatting about sex, then what? This is more complicated than, "Is a minor involved."

But do please try and differentiate between an interesting computer science problem, and an actual government putting such an algorithm into use.

Except that it is practically guaranteed to be put to use by law enforcement, assuming it works at all. This is like saying, "Let's not confuse an interesting experiment in identifying which gun fired some bullet with law enforcement activities!"

This looks like a not-too-well-prepared excercise as there is absolutely no definition of what they mean with "sexual predator," except that a sexual predator tries to gain some sort of a sexually-loaded response from the other side. The problem: what is considered a "sexually-loaded response," would e.g. a boyfriend asking his girlfriend for a bikini-picture qualify as a "predator" even though the act is perfectly common and acceptable, do they deem there is a possibility of a sexually-loaded conversation that still manages to say within the terms of "good behaviour" or are all sexually-loaded comments and conversations inherently "bad behaviour" etc. etc.

I have a feeling the whole point with this is to use the results for "protect the children" - politics in an effort to score brownie-points.

While cloaked in "won't somebody please think of the children" language, it appears to me that this project is really all about developing technology to rapidly scan a mountain of text conversations to identify any instances of behavior for which you have a few documented prototypes.

Swap in political activist, opposition party, occupy movement, flash mob, or hackers, and the project doesn't seem so appealing. The goal sounds like they would like to find an engine to which you could feed in a few examples and have a few thousand computers watching all conversations on the net.

Why would Universities participate in that? Are these people that naive? Why not spend the money on education materials, or web sites explaining the sexual predators techniques so at risk populations can be smarter, rather than helping governments build Skynet?

Why would Universities participate in that? Are these people that naive? Why not spend the money on education materials, or web sites explaining the sexual predators techniques so at risk populations can be smarter, rather than helping governments build Skynet?

If the alternative is that the governments build this secretly, then it's much better to have it out in the open, as public research. It's maybe even a question of civil rights, if this was implemented in a live environment.

You make a good point, that public research could be used for good, built into software that runs locally on your 13 year old daughters computer or phone which pops up a warning telling her, in language she can understand, that the other party is a) probably much older, b) persistently steering the conversation toward sex, c) are you sure you want to post that? d) OMFG I'm telling mom....

(You'd probably have to leave off point d) or she would find ways around the software.)

First, "being persistent" (common dating advice for men in earlier decades) became "stalking". Telling a woman she looked hot became "sexual harassment", even when the man had no power over the woman. Now, asking for sex makes you a "sexual predator". And if a woman agrees to sex, men have to worry that she may later claim she was raped.

There is a difference between being persistent and stalking a woman. If you don't know the difference you should probably not try to be persistent.

Choose who you flirt with wisely and you won't have most of these problems. In an office environment let her flirt first. Then flirt back, but don't escalate and always have an out. You should be doing that anyway since you don't want to be "too interested". When you compliment a woman remember she is more than just good looks. No one was ever sued for sexual har

Since when is one person chatting with another and asking for "sexual favors" suddenly a sexual predator? If I'm hitting on a person and ask to see a naughty pic this is predatory behavior? If the person is of age and I'm of age WTF is the issue? If they asks me for a pic and I'm interested am I being preyed upon somehow? What if I welcome this, what's the issue? The assumptions here are tremendous IMO! Please tell me age plays SOME factor in all of this sheesh!

The goal of this sub-task is to identify classes of authors, namely online predators. You will be given chat logs involving two (or more) people and have to determine who is the one trying to convince the other partecipants(s) to provide some sexual favour . You will also need to identify the particular conversation where the person exploits his bad behavior.

It would seem to me the use of the word participant would incite that both parties are receptive to the chat at hand, in which case depending on the

I spent a great deal of time (in high school) talking to girls from my high school on AOL Instant Messenger back in the day. I bet 90% of that time was spent trying to get sexual favors. I'm sure I was often inappropriate, but I wasn't a pedophile (kinda hard when all parties are 16-18 years old).

I think they could mine bash.org for a sampling to base their algorithm on. Unfortunately they'd have to wade through discussions of horse porn and tabletop role playing game issues before they could establish a firm model to follow...

I think they could mine bash.org for a sampling to base their algorithm on. Unfortunately they'd have to wade through discussions of horse porn and tabletop role playing game issues before they could establish a firm model to follow...

Agreed, I'd feel a lot better if part of this competition was zero (not "acceptably low") false positives. Some backwards places in the world (yes, I am speaking specifically of America) being accused of sex crimes is a Bad Thing and will ruin your entire life, even if the accusation is baseless. It is not acceptable to create an algorithm that will ruin innocent people's lives with some probability, if used for its intended purpose.

Thanks to the incomprehensible network of laws, chances are the victims of a false positive are already guilty of something else, so they deserve it.

And I guess America deserves it for continuing to vote Republocrat.

False positives are likely to be acceptable as they will be mining masses of date for juicy bits to pass onto human operators who spend all day reading through terrible filth and slowly going insane (I had a similar job to this). Missing key details is far more worrying than passing a bit of extra work onto the human operators.

Think of the children, man. Just because a few people are jailed that were hitting on other people who were legal doesn't mean this system doesn't work. Besides, what would you rather have? A few people you don't know and will likely never interact with thrown in jail? Or the risk that maybe possibly someday your kid could be talked dirty to online?